French cinema icon Catherine Deneuve has attacked the #MeToo movement.

The 74-year-old has even argued men should be "free to hit on" women.

The actress attacked the "puritanism" triggered by the recent surge of sexual harassment allegations.

She is best known for her role in 1967 film Belle du Jour.

Deneuve signed an open letter published by the newspaper Le Monde.

"Legitimate protests against the sexual violence that women are subject to, particularly in their professional lives", had turned into a"'witch-hunt", it claimed.

"Rape is a crime, but trying to seduce someone, even persistently or clumsily, is not - nor is men being gentlemanly a macho attack," the letter said.

"Men have been punished summarily, forced out of their jobs when all they did was touch someone's knee or try to steal a kiss."

Men had been dragged through the mud, they insisted, for "talking about intimate subjects during professional dinners or for sending sexually-charged messages to women who did not return their attentions".

"What began as freeing women up to speak has today turned into the opposite - we intimidate people into speaking 'correctly', shut down those who don't fall into line, and those women who refused to bend" to the new realities "are regarded as complicit and traitors", they said.

"Instead of helping women, this frenzy to send these (male chauvinist) 'pigs' to the abattoir actually helps the enemies of sexual liberty - religious extremists and the worst sort of reactionaries," the women asserted.

"As women we do not recognise ourselves in this feminism, which beyond denouncing the abuse of power, takes on a hatred of men and of sexuality."

They insisted that women were "sufficiently aware that the sexual urge is by its nature wild and aggressive. But we are also clear-eyed enough not to confuse an awkward attempt to pick someone up with a sexual attack."